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By Keem Abdul
The Silence of Badagry
If you drive 45 minutes west of Lagos Island, past the chaos of Mile 2 and the sprawl of Ojo, the air changes. The lagoon widens. The pace slows. You know you’ve entered Badagry.
Badagry is history you can touch. It’s the point of no return for millions taken during the transatlantic slave trade. It’s the home of the first storey building in Nigeria, of early missionary work, of a people who have watched Lagos grow into a megacity while their own division remained on the margins.
And in the 58 years since Lagos became a state, Badagry has never produced a governor.
Five administrative divisions make up Lagos: Ikeja, Lagos Island, Ikorodu, Epe, and Badagry. Four have had their turn at Alausa. Four have seen their sons and daughters take the oath of office. Badagry has watched, waited, and been told to be patient.
That silence is what brought Samuel Mawuyon Ajose, known to supporters as SMA, into the race.
He didn’t enter politics with fanfare or a dynasty behind him. He entered as a wealthy businessman and technocrat who had spent years building outside the system. And he entered with a simple, dangerous question: If Lagos is one state, why does one division still feel like a stranger in its own home?
Who Is Samuel Mawuyon Ajose?
On paper, SMA doesn’t fit the typical Lagos political mold. He’s not a career legislator. He’s not a former commissioner who spent decades climbing the party ladder. He’s a technocrat who built wealth in the private sector, and a philanthropist who, through the SMA Foundation, has been doing the kind of grassroots work that politicians usually only remember during election season.
His background matters because it shapes his pitch. Ajose doesn’t sell himself as a godfather’s protégé or a street politician who knows how to “settle” the system. He sells himself as evidence that governance doesn’t have to be inherited. It can be earned.
Badagry people call him one of their own, not because he shouts it loudest, but because he stayed. While others left Badagry behind once they “made it,” Ajose’s investments and NGO work remained rooted there. In a city where origin is often performative, that matters.
The Birth of “SMA GOLD”
Every movement needs a name that sticks. Ajose’s team settled on “SMA GOLD.”
It’s more than a catchy acronym. GOLD here stands for Grassroots, Oneness, Liberation, Development. The message is deliberate. This isn’t a one-man campaign. It’s a structure designed to unify supporters across all 57 Local Government Areas and LCDAs in Lagos.
The strategy is clear: if Badagry has been marginalized because it’s small and peripheral, then SMA has to make the entire state feel peripheral to him.
Volunteers on the ground describe the movement as different from the usual rent-a-crowd rallies. It’s younger, more digital, and oddly disciplined. There’s an emphasis on data, ward-level organizing, and town hall meetings that don’t end in 10 minutes of speeches and a quick exit.
The risk, of course, is that structure without money collapses in Nigerian politics. That’s where the second pillar comes in.
The Equity Argument That Won’t Go Away
Ajose’s central campaign thesis is equity. He doesn’t argue that Badagry deserves the governorship because it’s poor, or because it’s historically significant, or because it’s owed a favor. He argues that Lagos’ unity is incomplete if one of its five divisions has never led.
“Zoning is not about division,” he has said in consultations across the state. “Zoning is about making sure no one feels like an outsider in their own house.”
It’s an argument that resonates beyond Badagry. In Ikorodu, where he has met with traditional rulers, the conversation quickly moves from Badagry’s exclusion to their own fears of being sidelined. In Epe, where another division produced a governor, the question becomes: if it happened once, why can’t it happen again?
Equity is a harder sell than cash. But it’s stickier. Cash can be countered with more cash. An idea of fairness, once planted, doesn’t leave people’s minds easily.
The Money Question
Let’s be blunt: you don’t challenge Lagos’ political establishment without money.
Ajose’s financial capacity is the reason he’s no longer dismissed as a joker in the pack. Backed by the SMA Foundation, he made headlines with a pledge of ₦500 million per LGA for grassroots mobilization.
The number is staggering. Critics call it reckless. Supporters call it the only way to level a field that has been tilted for decades.
What’s important isn’t just the amount, but what it signals. It signals that Ajose isn’t waiting for party financiers to adopt him. He’s self-funded enough to set his own terms. In a system where money buys access, that independence turns him from a supplicant into a competitor.
It also changes the psychology of the race. Once it’s clear you can pay for ward meetings, mobilize youth, and sustain a campaign for months, established players have to take you seriously. Even if they don’t like you.
Clearing the First Hurdle
The APC Primaries
In Nigerian politics, surviving the screening panel is half the battle.
Ajose was officially cleared by the All Progressives Congress APC screening panel. That clearance allowed him to purchase the Expression of Interest and Nomination forms and enter the party primaries officially.
That alone tells you something. Parties don’t clear outsiders unless they see either a threat or a use for them. In Ajose’s case, it’s likely both. He brings new energy, new money, and a narrative that the party can use to counter accusations of being an exclusive club for Lagos Island and Ikeja elites.
But clearance is not endorsement. The real fight starts now.
The Monarchs and the Ground Game
One of Ajose’s quiet wins has been traditional backing. He has secured endorsements from traditional rulers across Badagry, and his statewide consultations have included visits to monarchs in Ikorodu and beyond.
In Lagos, traditional rulers don’t command votes the way they once did. But they command legitimacy. A visit to a palace, a prayer, a public blessing — these are signals to elders and community leaders that this candidate is not a fly-by-night opportunist.
Pair that with youth mobilization, and you have a classic pincer movement. The elders give legitimacy. The youth give energy. If both hold, the middle collapses.
The “Dark Horse” Label and the Ambode Factor
Every underdog needs a story. Ajose’s is that he’s the dark horse no one saw coming.
The label stuck after reports surfaced that former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode had quietly asked his followers to vote for Ajose.
If true, it’s significant. Ambode remains a respected figure in Lagos politics, especially among technocrats and professionals who felt his administration was cut short. His quiet nod gives Ajose credibility with a demographic that doesn’t respond to thuggery or cash-for-vote politics.
But being a dark horse has a downside. You’re also an outsider. Some in the APC see Ajose as a disruptor who could upset carefully negotiated power-sharing arrangements. Others see him as useful precisely because he isn’t tied to any of the old feuds.
Why This Race Feels Different
There have been other attempts to break Badagry’s political glass ceiling. Most fizzled out after the primaries. What makes Ajose different is the combination of three things:
Money: Enough to run a statewide campaign without begging for scraps.
Message: Equity and inclusion that resonates beyond his hometown.
Momentum: A grassroots movement that isn’t just rented for the day.
Add to that his refusal to back down. In a political culture where many challengers are bought off or scared off after the first round of pressure, Ajose has kept moving. His team calls it “the moving train” effect. Once it starts, it’s hard to stop without derailing something.
The Doubts Are Real
No honest assessment can ignore the obstacles.
Some party heavyweights see Ajose as chasing shadows. Lagos politics is about structure, and structure is about relationships built over 20 years. Ajose doesn’t have that. He’s building it now, and building it fast, but time is short.
There’s also the question of sustainability. Can a campaign built on personal wealth survive the inevitable attrition of a long primary season? Can a message of equity hold when the bargaining table gets crowded with promises and threats?
And then there’s the simple fact that Badagry is still the smallest division by population and political capital. Sympathy doesn’t win primaries. Delegates do.
The Stakes Beyond Badagry
If Ajose wins the APC ticket, it changes Lagos politics permanently.
It tells every division that the unwritten rule of “your turn will come” is real. It tells young technocrats that you don’t need to spend 15 years in the House of Assembly to be taken seriously. It tells the establishment that money and message, combined with grassroots work, can crack the old order.
If he loses, the story doesn’t end. A strong showing by Ajose forces the next governor, whoever it is, to take Badagry seriously. Roads, tourism, infrastructure — the neglect becomes a political liability.
In that sense, Ajose has already won something. He’s made Badagry impossible to ignore.
King-in-Waiting or Shadow-Chaser?
So, is Samuel Mawuyon Ajose a king that’s yet to be crowned, or is he just chasing shadows?
The answer depends on who you ask.
Ask a Badagry elder, and you’ll hear about 58 years of waiting, and about a son who finally stood up.
Ask a party insider in Ikeja, and you’ll hear about a rich outsider who doesn’t understand how thegame is played.
Ask a 24-year-old volunteer in Agege, and you’ll hear about a campaign that feels different, that texts you back, that shows up in your ward.
Only time will tell which voice was right.
What’s clear now is that Ajose is no longer a footnote. He’s a moving train. And in Lagos politics, moving trains don’t stay ignored for long. Either they’re stopped, or they change the track.
The Touching Part Nobody Talks About
Behind the strategy and the money and the zoning arguments is something simpler.
Ajose talks about his father, about growing up in Badagry when the road to Lagos felt like a journey to another country. He talks about watching his friends leave for “real opportunities” and never come back. He talks about the shame of explaining to visitors why the place with so much history has so little to show for it.
That’s why this resonates. It’s not just about power. It’s about dignity.
Politics in Nigeria is often transactional. This campaign, at its core, is asking for something emotional: recognition. The chance for a division that has given so much to Lagos to finally be seen as part of it, not apart from it.
What Happens Next
The primaries will be brutal. The money will flow. The deals will be made in rooms Ajose has never been invited to.
But campaigns like this have a way of forcing those rooms to open.
If Ajose can hold his coalition together, if the SMA GOLD movement doesn’t fracture under pressure, and if his equity argument continues to spread beyond Badagry, then May 2026 becomes a referendum on more than just a candidate. It becomes a referendum on who Lagos belongs to.
Conclusion: The Train Doesn’t Stop
Lagos loves a comeback story. It loves an underdog who refuses to be quiet.
Samuel Mawuyon Ajose may not win. The odds are still against him. But he has already done what few outsiders manage: he made the establishment adjust its calculations.
He came from Badagry with a movement called GOLD, a pledge of ₦500 million per LGA, and an argument that fairness matters. He secured traditional backing, passed the party screening, and mobilized youth who were tired of being told to wait their turn.
Is he a king-in-waiting? Maybe.
Is he chasing shadows? Possibly.
But one thing is certain: in a race full of familiar names and old deals, Samuel Mawuyon Ajose is the one name that makes people stop and ask, “What if?”
And in politics, “what if” is where everything starts.
- Keem Abdul, a public relations guru, publisher and writer, hails from Lagos. He can be reached via text +23418038795377 or Akeemabdul2023@gmail.com
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